Universities across NSW and the ACT are declaring alarming deficits and revenue losses, as staff and students deal with sweeping cuts.
Many of these universities are affected by recent limitations placed on the number of international student enrolments. International student caps, proposed by the federal government in August 2024, were initially blocked by the Senate in December 2024.
The proposed Bill would have given the Minister for Education the power to set a cap on the number of international student enrolments, with Labor hoping to cap international student numbers at 270,000 nationwide, with individual limits set for each institution. In 2023, there were 323,000 commencing international student enrolments.
However, the government has since introduced a loophole via Ministerial Direction 111, enacting “slow-go” visa processing, whereby students are allocated to either a priority 1 tier (high) or a priority 2 tier (standard). Student applications are to be treated as high priority until tertiary institutions reach a prioritisation threshold, which amounts to 80 per cent of the caps that the government had sought to pass. When this threshold is met, all applications are downgraded to standard priority.
The 2023-2024 financial year saw a reduction of 60,000 higher education visas granted. This has not come without backlash. The number of international students challenging visa decisions through the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) has soared to 25,854, with applications costing students $3,496 apiece.
In June 2023, international students constituted about 14.5 per cent of the backlog, which stood then at 2,100. In February 2025, they made up 61.7 per cent, with 25,854 cases. This means that while the ART is reviewing their cases, thousands more international students are remaining on Australian shores in a state of limbo: while both major parties are pushing for their elimination in order to free up housing space, they are paralysed by the tribunal system, which itself is bogged down with cases. And, as a result of the lost revenue from international students, many Australian universities are paying the price.
One university to announce major cuts in the last few weeks was the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), which recently announced a $100 million cut from its budget, in addition to axing 400 staff positions. This includes 250 professional staff and 150 academic staff, which constitutes 9 per cent of the university’s workforce.
Following these announcements, Provost Vicki Chen resigned from her post.
The NTEU released a statement on 17 April condemning the cuts and “serious management failures.” The NTEU said that “unaccountable senior university leaders have bungled restructures and major projects, leading to budget blow-outs and soaring workloads.”
The NTEU UTS Branch President Sarah Attfield said that “Staff mental health and morale are at an all time low. Failures in consultation and transparency have hamstrung staff, leaving them increasingly unable to identify and challenge oversights made by leaders so far removed from the day-to-day functions of the university.”
The Australian Financial Review reported that despite the huge cuts, UTS had a record enrolment intake of 3,257 international students for Semester 2 2025.
Macquarie University (MQ), meanwhile, reported an $81 million deficit in the 2023-2024 financial year; the fourth consecutive year where it has reported a deficit. The university has been consistently enacting cuts that cripple the student and staff community, reducing the university to a skeletal structure.
MQ has a staff ratio of 27:1, with 30,951 equivalent full-time student loads (EFTSL) enrolled in 2023, alongside 1,133 academic staff. For comparison, USyd has a staff ratio of 22.6:1, with 58,087 EFTSL positions in 2023 and 2,563 academic staff. This has seen classes stripped down to below the bare minimum.
One student who preferred to remain anonymous told Honi, “One of the main reasons why I chose my current undergrad course (Bachelor of Environmental Science) was for all of the really interesting field trips included in most of the units. One of which in particular being ENVS3241 Active Environments, which was essentially a two week field trip held over the summer break that went to New Zealand. Unfortunately, this unit and likely some other ones that I have already planned on enrolling into are going to be discontinued or merged together because of these budget cuts.”
MQ’s School of Natural Sciences (SoNS) has a fleet of 64 cars which are likely to be halved, according to students and staff. This would likely cause significant disruption: according to MQ vehicle use guidelines, the cars are primarily for “teaching and research purposes”. Given the hands-on nature of many disciplines in the SoNS which frequently require field trips, this would reduce the quality of students’ learning.
When contacted for comment, the university said that “no courses have been cut at this time.” They explained that some courses have been omitted from current Universities Admissions Centre listings.
A spokesperson said that “Macquarie University prides itself on being a distinctive and innovative institution that delivers world-class education, research and healthcare… Reviewing courses and offerings is part of this and is normal, annual business for any university.”
The NTEU has started a petition to stop cuts to arts courses at MQ. The Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Chris Dixon, has proposed cutting eight work units (departments and schools) to five.
The proposal follows a 2019 cut where 13 work units were reduced to eight.
Another petition has been started by the NTEU to protest against general course cuts at MQ. The petition says that thirteen of the 23 Arts majors at MQ are rumoured to be cut for 2026. In addition, all students studying a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Science will be compelled to do the same eight first-year units.
The NTEU says that “The University’s financial issues stem not from teaching or research, but from debts exceeding $800 million accrued through management decisions such as building projects and the university hospital.”
Other concerns of MQ staff arise from a proposed ‘expression of interest’ (EOI) process for teaching, whereby staff annually ‘bid’ in an EOI system to determine their teaching workload. MQ management have also proposed annual curriculum reviews, as well as “research prioritisation”, vague enough to undermine the security of academics and researchers whose work might not align with management priorities.
In a similar vein to MQ, the University of Wollongong (UOW) is attempting to cover their losses by cutting staff and reducing schools and faculties. The university is planning to cut up to 185 non-academic staff, which amounts to a tenth of its total non-academic workforce. UOW reported in January that they had lost $35 million in revenue.
The university intends to reduce its four faculties to three, reduce its schools from 18 to 11, and thereby save over $20 million.
UOW cited a significant reduction in international onshore student enrolments as a key cause for its 2024 deficit.
The Wollongong University Students Association President, Hanzel-Jude Pador (NSWLS), said to Honi that “The most immediate impacts of these cuts for staff are the loss of jobs; especially unionised jobs, whereas for students it is the loss of their courses, required parts of their degrees, and now with the most recent round, loss of essential aspects of their student services.
“In saying this, I think UOW shouldn’t be attempting to fix its poor financial mismanagement of a stated $35 million by gutting itself of the primary educational function and shifting the impact and cost on its students, teaching staff, and professional staff.”
Pador continued, “It’s important to note these most recent rounds of cuts come at the same time UOW announces that it will begin to establish a new Saudi Arabia campus in Riyadh, and the VC [is] making more than a million a year. How does UOW find so much money and resources for this, but dozens of staff and hundreds of students are left stranded?”
UOW’s new campus in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, comes about due to a Saudi initiative called Vision 2030, whereby UOW is the first foreign university to receive a Saudi Investment License to set up a university in the country.
The administration has defended this decision as not only feasible, but beneficial for its domestic institution, saying that “The success of our offshore campuses contributes to UOW’s financial sustainability.” UOW also has a satellite campus in Dubai.
The Riyadh satellite campus will, according to the university, be funded by UOW Global Enterprises using cash reserves generated by global operations, without using funding from domestic operations.
Western Sydney University (WSU) is planning to cut between 300 to 400 jobs as it faces a $79 million deficit. The university had forecast a deficit of $6.5 million for the 2025-2026 financial year, but this is now expected to swell to $79 million.
WSU Vice-Chancellor George Williams attributed these deficits to international student caps and lighter course loads: “The international student caps are hitting our university hard as is increased competition for students in Western Sydney. Student behaviour is also changing, with many choosing to undertake fewer courses, no doubt due in many cases to cost-of-living pressures.”
He explained that the demographic of WSU meant that it was significantly more susceptible to pressure from international student caps than other universities. “When it comes to our University, we have the largest number of low SES [socioeconomic status] students in the nation, two-thirds of our students, the first in family to ever go to university… What we’re hearing from those students is they’re not able to both study and eat, and international students provide a key source of revenue to support domestic students, otherwise unable to study at University, but for the support we are able to provide.”
Williams stated that he had reduced his own senior executive leadership team by 25 per cent. Salaries for Williams and other senior leaders have been frozen, and strict limits have been placed on expenses such as hiring, catering and travel.
Over in Canberra, the Australian National University (ANU) has reported a whopping $400 million deficit. The deficit was initially misreported as $460 million.
In response to the deficit, ANU Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell has announced a restructuring scheme called ‘Renew ANU’. A key part of this is the ‘Voluntary Separation Scheme’, whereby staff are encouraged to leave of their own accord rather than be forced out of their jobs.
The administration plans to cut spending by $150 million and salaries by $100 million. Seven schools will be cut to six, and an estimated 650 jobs will be cut to bring about $100 million in savings.
At the end of March, ANU staff overwhelmingly supported a vote of no confidence in Vice-Chancellor Bell and Chancellor Julie Bishop. More than 800 staff participated, and of these, over 95 per cent voted no to the question, “Do you have confidence in the leadership of the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor?”
NTEU ACT Division Secretary Dr. Lachlan Clohesy commented, “ANU leadership overestimated the size of the 2024 deficit by more than $60 million. They then disestablished the College of Health and Medicine, attempted to take away a staff pay increase, and cut jobs and courses based on their erroneous budgeting. ANU staff demand accountability.”
ANUSA Education Officer Rosie Patton told Honi, “We’ve seen the NTEU run a really successful vote of no confidence campaign against the chancellor and vice-chancellor. That should tell you how they’re feeling. As for the students, they’re stressed — we’ve seen some students studying Design who don’t have enough class options to be able to graduate on time.”
She added, “There’s a really strong feeling that the university only cares about the bottom line and in the process has forgotten what’s most important, and that’s being a place for students to learn. We also know that sometime this quarter the full extent of Renew ANU comes out, which means they’re likely to be slashing most academic departments.”
NTEU National President Alison Barnes said that “The appalling thing is this is emblematic of the deep governance crisis we are seeing right across the country. We need real reform to stop the conflicts of interest and cultural decay of our public universities.”
On 29 January 2025, the federal government announced a senate inquiry into university governance, chaired by Senator Tony Sheldon. The NTEU cited this as a huge campaign win. “For years, we have been relentless in our fight to fix the broken governance model that has allowed almost $265 million in wages to be stolen from 150,000 staff—while vice-chancellors rake in more than $1 million each year on average.”
However, the inquiry is not all it’s cracked up to be. The government currently has over 60 senate inquiries that are overdue — now including this one. The inquiry submissions closed on 3 March, with the committee report due on 4 April 2025. That deadline was recently extended to 1 August, and no updates have been provided since then.
The ABC has uncovered the severe consequences of late senate inquiries: namely, it allows the government to delay policy making and let important issues stagnate while lining the pockets of senators with at least $217,000 a year.
Stevie Howson, NTEU NSW Acting Secretary, said to Honi that “The onslaught of job cuts at universities like University of Wollongong, University of Technology Sydney, and Macquarie University is indicative of a larger crisis in our universities – this is a fundamental failure of governance.”
He continued, “What we’re seeing are failures of executives to listen to staff concerns and expertise, severe financial and structural mismanagement, and decision making which lacks transparency. This is ultimately damaging to the public institutions our university leaders should be serving.”
The future for state and federal universities looks bleak, as the federal government shows no signs of repealing restrictions on international students, and tertiary institutions continue to cut staff and courses to tackle deficits.
But it can always get worse. The Coalition has threatened to place a flat 25 per cent cap on international students at all public universities, in an effort to cap numbers at 240,000 — 30,000 less than Labor’s attempt in 2024.
Peter Dutton has tried to justify this by saying, “My absolute priority is to get this housing mess sorted out.” Despite this, the Coalition had sided with the Greens against Labor last year in opposing the ALP’s proposed 270,000 cap. However, research from the University of South Australia refutes the claim that international students are to blame for rising rents and housing prices. The study showed that after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, an increase of 10,000 international students correlated with a $1 decrease in weekly rent prices when “rental inflation was controlled and rental vacancy rate was considered”. This included data from 2017-2024.
Michael Mu, a lead researcher who worked on the study, said that “[International students] are not the main competitors in the market… We found really no statistical relationship between international members and the housing crisis.” According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, international education was Australia’s fourth-largest export in the 2023-2024 financial year, after iron ore, coal and natural gas. The sector generated $50.5 billion, including course fees and revenue generated in the economy more broadly.
The Coalition’s policy aims to increase visa applications to $5000 for all institutions in the Group of 8 (Go8). The current fee is $1,600, which Labor had raised from $710 in July 2024. Other tertiary institutions would face a visa application fee of $2,500.
Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy said that the cuts would “take a sledgehammer to one of the nation’s biggest income generators.” He argued that they would not solve the housing crisis, but would add more financial pressure across universities, especially those in regional and outer metropolitan areas.
He added, “International education delivered more than half of Australia’s GDP growth in 2023 and almost single-handedly kept us out of recession… Students make up less than six per cent of the national rental market. The real solution is more homes, not fewer students.”
Hardly any universities will emerge from 2025 unscathed by draconian federal policy and financial blowouts. Sheehy commented, “Australia’s world-class education system has taken decades to build and only moments to unravel. Once students go elsewhere, it’s incredibly hard to bring them back.”
